Reparations
by fan-nerd
Summary: After everything has changed, after she's conceded defeat, she must still come to amends with her captain. Their unintended meeting in a private room was more than she expected, but was exactly what they both needed. Implied Kirk/Spock.


**A/N:** The entirety of this story uses pronouns, not names. Mentions of _Into Darkness_. Please enjoy.

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**_Reparations_**

* * *

At first, she watches them play this dangerous game like a highly volatile and overprotective bird of prey. Eventually, putting her captain to death figuratively with her gaze became something she masked quite well, and her friend and long-time companion appreciated the gesture. After all, the two men had long since forged a bond strong enough to forget their prior animosity towards each other, so it was high time that she started getting over the moment and acted like an adult about the whole thing. (In her defense, the man she'd held romantic sway over had been just as pissed and ready to kill him initially, even before the moment where he'd choked him on the bridge.)

So, to find herself growing older every day despite everything else, aging regardless of her desires, sighing into a cup of tea, in her hiding place, with the man she respected but also felt a pang of hatred to as well, was not altogether unexpected, but was mostly tiring. He moved to get up and leave, sensing the hairs rising on the back of her neck, but she made a motion with her hands before sighing again. "You can stay. We probably need to talk, anyways."

"Those words, in my experience, have never meant anything good," He murmurs humorlessly, plopping back into one of the cushions and making himself comfortable, a glass full of what she assumes to be liquor beginning to grow watery as the ice in the container melted. "Either it was the breakup, or it was the commitment, and neither one was exactly the best point of the evening."

"Luckily for you, we don't have the sexual history between us to make this awkward," She dryly retorts, and earns a chuckle for her efforts. For a few minutes, they sip at their drinks in silence, and the air is not, for once, stagnant with their mixed emotions. Perhaps they'd only needed to meet like this, alone, after all this time. The tea is rather good, she thinks to herself—perhaps she'll even commend the natural resources manager and nutrition budget officers for their efforts. Struggling for a way to break the lingering tension between them, she starts with something completely off-topic to the pair of them, but it was on her tongue, regardless. "I'm not a coffee person."

The response she receives is both completely expected and wholly surprising. "Well, I mean, nothing in the rulebook says you have to like coffee, even if you're from Africa. I'm not too keen on the stuff myself." Her eyebrow cocks, and she questions the integrity of this statement for a moment while his blue eyes glint with amusement. "Of course I have my cup at the start of my shift, but that doesn't mean I _like_ it. It's just something I do by reflex now."

"Ah," She says audibly, agreeing inherently. Drinking tea before bedtime was something she'd been coaxed into from childhood, cups filled with milk and honey on special occasions filling her belly and making her eyelids droop before she could stop them. "He doesn't like coffee, either."

"He told me." And just like that, the reason for this meeting has slipped into their conversation, very naturally. It's almost as though she planned it that way, but for all her linguistic mastery and control, she was no tactician. This opponent, however, would have valid standing in either profession, and, in fact, used both of these skills to his advantage on a regular basis.

"I am sorry it's taken this long. _This_, I mean." This meeting. Coming to terms with the change that had nearly torn them all apart, but they'd fought through it, and there was no denying that the whirlwind of a captain had had his knuckles whitened, holding on to both of them and forcing them through all the pain.

"Don't be," The dark-blonde haired man says, his mouth around the damp rim of the glass. His fingers are calloused and rough and tan, his work is not easy, and she certainly hadn't made it any easier, for several months at a time. Even so, for the last year or so, they'd been something closer to amiable, however, so things were improving, at the very least. "I get it."

"Do you?" She doesn't sound challenging—if anything, she sounds concerned, _for him_, which completely floors both of them. "He's so in love with you, he can't see straight, let alone think _logically_."

"I don't know about all _that_," He chuckles deeply, clinking the remaining few ice cubes as he moves the fist with his drink in hand. The concept of someone being so completely overwhelmed with affection for him was foreign, ridiculous even, and even with constant reminders that he was deserving of every bit of the reciprocated sentiments he gave _every single person_ on the starship, he was too internally damaged to really _get it_.

"I mean it," The communications officer puts her drink on a table that resembles an old-fashioned trolley, seriously moving towards him and gesticulating to make her words more effective to him. "You're a pro at reading him—maybe more than me." This admission hurts, but she swallows past the lump in her throat and continues. "When you…died, he was more broken than he ever could've been, if I were the one in the chamber, and not you."

"That's not—!" He starts, leaping to her defense.

"It _is_ true," She sweeps a piece of hair from her face. "We were never…what you were. What you _are_," Amending her own words makes the truth seem more real to her, so perhaps it will do the same for her leader. "We are good friends—the _best_, really—which is why I was so exceedingly angry. Probably with myself," Her speech became very somber at the admittance. "Also with how _easy_ you made it seem."

One of his dark eyebrows cocks and his cheeks twitch with the beginnings of a scowl-smirk. "Hey now, it sure as hell wasn't easy." Fighting for his life _against_ the Vulcan was completely different than fighting for his life _with_ him, and the first was a lot more frequent than the second, at the start of it all.

She, however, rolls her dark eyes. "I know, I know. All I meant is, you have this…_thing_," For all her language mastery, the childish slang rolls off, and his snicker is deserved, for the falter. "Charisma, magnetism, whatever you want to call it. It's kind of hard to ignore, and I'm sure _you_ noticed, since it's worked wonders for you." It's a jab deliberately aimed at forgone times, when he'd been hard-pressed to keep a steady relationship for longer than a week's worth of shore leave.

His returned amusement sounds more bitter than she recalls hearing from him in some time. "Little bit," Is all he says, but she hears a world of meaning in just those two words.

_Family life wasn't ideal, had to make my own way, and that 'charm' is how I survived._

Grimacing past her interpretation, the woman continues. "You know, when you first 'beat' his test," Using the word brings the confident smirk back to his lips, even if the emotion isn't in his eyes just yet. "I spoke to him, just before the hearing, and he wasn't listening to me at all, despite his best attempts. From the start, you have been very difficult for him to ignore."

"Okay, I'll agree with that," He allows, swigging some of his liquor with that lopsided grin.

Rolling her eyes at his words is more impulse than anything, but after a moment, she continues. They're far beyond the stage where she thinks he's just a cocksure adolescent in a man's body—they have respect for each other, and at times, when her gaze hadn't been setting him to fire, they got very close to being called _friends_. Maybe after all of this is behind them, they will grab the bull by the horns and finish the deal, shake hands, and really _mean_ that. "Everything that followed, I saw very differently for some time. I was interpreting his actions differently. After that day, though, _I_ gave him permission to choose between us, and I shouldn't have been so infuriated. The answer was obvious." Spock was crying, _emotional_. He was in a rage—_grief, sadness, loss_, and most importantly, _love_.

Platonic, surely. Brotherly, more so. Still, she _knew_ that Vulcan, really knew him, trusted him—_believed_ in both of them, so she saw things as the beginning of the end. And when she nodded, and whispered, _go get him_, it was the spiral that led to a world of trouble.

Still, bowing out gracefully was something on which she had prided herself for some time. After a short three-and-a-quarter years together (_where had the time gone_), she said goodbye to him as a lover, hello as a friend, and then began to walk away from the short bridge of friendship she had once extended to her captain in respect during those years, and thusly started to distance herself.

If she hadn't done just that, their professional lives would've been in jeopardy thousands of times over, because, frankly, she wasn't over her lover yet, and the only way to salvage her personal life was to break things off with her captain. It felt just—her friendship with her ex-inamorato was tender and precious and the Vulcan needed it, she could tell, because his conflicted thoughts would not organize themselves properly, not when their captain was involved. This made her boss the enemy for making her friend's life so difficult, and also for being the unwitting stake between them, the reason for her heartache that she had allowed to break them apart. Still, no one had ever given her leader commendations for being patient, and anyone that had known him well would be sure to tell you how increasingly stubborn he became with time, if there was something he wanted.

He was fairly certain of the reasons why his lieutenant commander had grown even _colder_ to him, was sure why his first officer had been so avoidant of touching him again, afraid he would fall apart and disappear after he'd risen from the dead. So he went out of his way to force his second-in-command to touch him, worrying him even more, but opening his heart by slowly chipping away at his barriers, and it _worked_. The lieutenant had been trickier, but he acted like every bit of her attitude was normal, and never had her removed for her frankly gross insubordination, merely challenging her to do better, and she could not lie in saying that his actions had made her stronger, and even better at her job. In the end, his tricks and traps had them right back here, making amends properly, so she absently realized that, no matter what, he had _won_. He was the best tactician on this ship, which was why he held the command chair, and she certainly wasn't about to argue that fact.

More than that, he'd even managed to _change_ them—everyone aboard this ship, really, but most importantly, the head of the sciences, and his first officer, and she knew _exactly_ how the shorter man's influence had changed the half-human.

"Before you say anything, I know you're the right choice," She continues after a beat, noting that the man with her has grown surprisingly pensive. He seems shocked to hear her say this. "I was mostly pissed that I _wasn't_. It was hard to be friends with you when I found an excuse not to be, and when I was _his_ friend first."

"Yeah," He'd had his fair share of romantic entanglements, happiness, heartbreak, and all, so he knew exactly what she'd gone through, struggling to make things okay, to be friends with both of them despite her heart's desires. It got easier with time. "I understood, seriously. If I hadn't, I'd have had you put away ages ago." Unable to stop the laugh in her throat, she nods. "I'm glad we're…_here_ again."

"You didn't deserve the way I treated you," She said, sloshing the tea in her cup. It was growing lukewarm, but she couldn't bring herself to care. "You're a great captain, and a good man, besides."

"Yikes, don't know if I'm ready for the nice lieutenant to come out and play yet," He offers, and she resists the urge to not only roll her eyes again but to elbow him in the side.

"Don't be such a brat," Admonishing him feels good, and the teasing feels natural, instead of the strained mess it had been. "Just…don't mess this up for him. I don't want to lose our friendship, or my job, because of it."

Flicking his eyes up and down for a moment, he eventually looked at her directly and smiled, less charming than his smirks, but far more genuine, and filled with mixed emotions that he only let people see on rare occasions. "I won't." They sip at their drinks for a few more minutes before something beeps, and he flicks on a handheld communicator. "Kirk here."

"_If you don't go to sleep in the next ten minutes, you won't get out of medbay for the next week,_" The strained voice of his friend reminds him, and the blonde can't help snorting. "_Don't make me drag you up here._"

"Alright, Bones, I'm going, I'm _going_," He assures him with a pleading sort of sigh. Pushing himself up, he puts the glass into a small lift, which will deliver it safely back to the mess. Smiling easily, he offers her a hand, once he's standing. "Pleasure, as always, Lieutenant Uhura."

"Good night, sir," She clasps his hand back and lets go after a pause and a smile.

When he sweeps back into his room, he flops onto his mattress, where the stoic waits for him patiently, sitting against the backboard stiffly. Without saying anything, the blonde clasps his hand tightly, for reassurance, and receives a small pulsation of a movement back. The voice that calls him _Jim_ like a prayer welcomes him to the land of dreams for some time before his meditative breathing forces both of their eyes closed.


End file.
